Volume 52, Number 13 · August 11, 2005
The New American Century?
By Brian Urquhart
The Opportunity: America's Moment to Alter History's Course
by Richard N. Haass
PublicAffairs, 242 pp., $25.00
The need, even the necessity, for United States leadership in international affairs has, at least since 1945, been taken for granted by most of the world's governments. Great international projects, including the United Nations itself, were carried out as the result of American initiatives. In the immediate postwar years when recovery and rehabilitation were an overwhelming priority, even the Soviet Union tacitly acknowledged US leadership and accepted it in practice in the work of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, which was sponsored by the US. During the cold war, countries outside the Soviet bloc accepted the United States at its own valuation as 'leader of the free world.' Again, in the euphoria of the immediate post–cold war period, especially in parts of the world stricken by man-made or natural disasters, the United States was seen as, in Madeleine Albright's words, 'the indispensable nation.'
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